


Freaks Like Me

by Accidentallytechohazardous



Series: Witch AU [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Soul Bond, Witch AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 05:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3598590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidentallytechohazardous/pseuds/Accidentallytechohazardous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place four years before the events of Meet Me on Cathedral Drive. The story of how a Witch met his Familiar, a friend left the fold, and the road was paved with good intentions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freaks Like Me

**Author's Note:**

> Back and deader than ever.
> 
> Illustration by CryingLittlePeople. Check out more amazing Bleach art and original art at cryinglittlepeople.tumblr.com!

Another beautiful day in the charming city. The sun is up, the birds are singing, and Renji is elbow-deep in an unidentifiable animal’s kidney

But let’s back up a scooch.

At the asscrack of dawn, Renji Abarai pulls himself together enough to pour the contents of the coffee pot down his throat, plus some toast thrown in as if to soften the blow to his kidneys.

The pot is set down on top of the table, which itself is littered with papers. Spellbooks, newspapers, bills. These things are such a consistent part of Renji’s living space he might as well consider them to be the tablecloth. Or at least part of the table.

Today is errand day, which is about as much of a chore as it sounds. It’s a day where instead of sleeping in, like any normal person might have the luxury of doing on a Sunday morning, Renji gets to drop his tool kit and vial case on the kitchen table next to his extensive collection of dirty dishes so he can finish a stupid hex for a stupid client to pay his stupid bills and maintain his stupid lifestyle.

His equipment threatens to quit on him. The case for his toolkit groans at the joints like old bones when he opens up the box and it swings apart into the small drawers that store his work things- more scalpels, some serrated and some not. Sewing scissors. Needles. A portable, hypodermic pump. A wicked set of fine knives, wrapped securely in thick leather for travel like teeth set in plush, pink gums. The average Witching kit looks strikingly like a burglar’s. Or perhaps one who dissects dead bodies for less than fully lawful reasons. Everything needs a good cleaning, which would be no problem if the jar of disinfectant weren’t at the bottom of one of the dozen of cardboard boxes pressed up against the wall in the far corner. Months later, and Renji has not yet finished unpacking. There’s a significant chance that he will never finish unpacking, after the fourteenth time he announced that he’d get around to it and then went down for a nap.

If Renji were a little more well-organized or perhaps a little less over-confident in himself, he might think to create a color-coding system for his ingredients. Instead, he somehow manages to convince himself, time after time, that he will always be able to find everything he needs the moment he needs it. And since, eventually, he does just that, there has never been concrete proof to stand against this system. The contents of the vial case rattle angrily as he rummages around it, glass singing as its knocked against glass, and eventually the thumb-sized bottle labeled ‘Fire Tears’ in scrawled, blocking handwriting and carrying a distinct aroma of newt finds it’s way into his hand. The cork releases in a lewd ‘pop’ when pulled out between Renji’s teeth, and he grumbles to himself as he fishes around in the contents with a hooked wire tool for a sufficient amount of eyes to finish up the spell. Everything smells like a hearty concoction of chemicals and animal parts. Delicious.

                                                     

Slowly, the building comes alive with the sound of movement and occupancy. Early in the morning is one thing- Renji’s been awake since it was still dark out, and even he’s not really sure he’s actually conscious or just very used to hallucinating vividly about work- but things never stay quiet for long on Bayside Street 6. Someone begins their daily prayers in the apartment above, the faint sound of rhythmic chanting seeping through the ceiling along with the smell of sulfur and iron. Through the thin, plaster walls, the shriek of at least several birds squawking chatters the dreary morning quiet. And then the clock strikes eight.

No real estate agent ever touched the Bayside 6, that’s for certain. The building itself is a catastrophe waiting to happen, the skeleton of a decrepit clock tower reanimated to life by the swarm of occupants who overlook the fact that it’s less of a building and more of a Frankenstein creation to call it a home. It’s easy to suspect that every floor is a patchwork of amateur handyman work, with rafters hammered in to support sagging walls and floorboards stamped into empty patches under ragged carpeting like stitches in skin.

It also happens to be the site of the biggest Coven in the city, a hive for Witches and other magicfolk. A sanctuary for the supernaturally inclined.

And once the hour creeps closer and closer, the gears and pumps of tarnished brass churn noisily up in the skull of the tower’s skeleton. The floor of Renji’s apartment is high enough to shake and growl under his feet in rhythm to the gears, coming to a teeth-jarring rattle when the bell begins to toll. A heavy clang of the bells singing above his head, up in the dusty top of the tower.

Renji counts one deep clang. Than another. Six go by in total, and that’s it. The clock is always one hour behind, exactly, and it might also be a contributing factor in why it’s so fucking hard to get sleep in this place. A mental note is made to reseal the enchantments on his room that block out all outside sound. Gods, he really needs to move out.  
The public is done a gentle service by the fact that Renji changes out of his comfy pajama pants and into something that makes him look slightly more respectable. The least dirtied pair of jeans he owns- that is to say, his last clean pair until laundry day- find their way onto his body. A gray sweatshirt staves off the late winter chill, over a black t-shirt. His sneakers have been attacked at the laces by Momo’s cat as of late, and friz out at the tattered ends when he ties them on. The smell of concocting still clings to his sleeves like a creature with claws, smelling faintly like smoke and chlorine.

The carpet has been ruined by everything from animal talons to cigarette holes, and the floor creaks companionably under Renji’s heels as he exits his apartment and makes the first journey of the day down the shuddering elevator to the adventurous tune of muzak.

“Good morning, starshine. The universe says hello.”

“You look like hell just tossed it’s cookies and named the sick Renji.”

Renji makes a sound halfway between a grumble and a whine, dubious wit for making a solid retort failing him. No one should have to face being assaulted with such remarks at eight in the morning, plus however long it took him to get dropped down a dozen floors. Fucking impudent. He tells them just that.

Yumichika sighs in a way that any lover of the theater would go aflutter for, attention otherwise absorbed in his newspaper snapped open in front of his chest. “Well, I don’t speak this particular dialect of Weird. Ikkaku, talk to the boy.”

“What?” Ikkaku objects, craning his head around to look up at his companion and away from the arrangement of bones and mason jars of red-stained liquid. “He’s not mine anymore-” And then is interrupted by Renji roughly nudging the flat of his sneaker against Ikkaku’s knee for his attention.

“I hungerrrr…”

“Breakfast stuff’s in the kitchen. I’m not your fucking maid, go feed yourself.”

“That sucks. You suck. I thought you were cool once and now you just suck. I’m horrified by that. Where’s Rukia?”

“Probably in the kitchen, feeding herself like a grown-up because she’s on the same screwy internal clock you are. Except able t’ take care of herself. Get your grimy shoe off me, I don’t know where you’ve been.”

“Who’s got a screwy internal clock? It’s barely after eight. That’s a perfectly acceptable time to get up.” Renji seethes, resigning himself to removing his foot after Ikkaku’s death-grip on his ankle threatens to deprive him of his balance and knock him on his ass. “That time did you guys get up?”

“Yesterday. We just got in this night. You see, Renji, honey, we’re professionals.” Yumichika answers, tone going flat and unimpressed. He licks his thumb, tongue barely darting between his teeth, and pulls the digit away with a dark blue and orange flame on the edge of the nail like a blowtorch. “All the big jobs require very late hours.”

The slender Witch jabbed his thumb into the newspaper, rotating his wrist around something in the print in front of him that Renji couldn’t see. A thin line of cyan smoke wafted from the page even as Yumichika flipped the paper around to show Renji the article circled. “Exhibit A.”

Illicit Party of Warlocks Removed from Grave County- Legal Penalty for Illegal Necromancy and Pyromancy Magic Undecided as of Yet

“Warlocks.” Renji read, furrowing his brow and flicking his gaze from the paper to the other two Witches. The article sported a lovely grainy black and white photo of the arrested magicfolk, white uniforms of their guild torn to bloodied rags in the midst of having their hands bound and magic sealed by officers. “What, are you guys bounty hunters now? That kind of shit is a bloodbath.”

“No, last night it was a bloodbath. Today it’s a ridiculous amount of silver split between our bank accounts.” Ikkaku corrected him, sweeping all the bones into his hands like marbles. “You shoulda been there, it was incredible. Wait ‘till you see the rest of the stuff I lifted off that necromancer girl before we turned her over! Say whatya’ want about those creeps, but they’ve got some next level dark magic. We could’ve done that job for free and still made bank off of the loot.”

“Yeah, entrepreneurial.” Renji grudgingly admitted, lifting the paper out of Yumichika’s hands and waving off the blue smoke to scan the print. “This was printed this morning. You guys seriously were out working all night?”

A hand clutching his hoodie nearly made Renji trip, but he maintained his balance long enough for Ikkaku to pull himself up from where he had been crouched on the floor with ease. “For fuck, you’re heavy.” Up and closer to the light, it was perhaps a little easier to tell that the older Witch had just rolled out of a firefight in the wee hours of the morning- the odd scratch and burn on his clothes, a few crusty scars and green bruises. But those things were as commonplace up and down Ikkaku’s arms, tracing across his shoulders and under his clothes, as markings on an animal. Renji’s former tutor had always been phenomenally daring, even for a Witch..

“A’course we did.” Ikkaku drawled importantly, dropping the contraband bones next to Yumichika on the banister and patting bone dust off his own hands. “That’s where all the money is gonna be nowadays. Ya’ can’t tell me it’s easy for a Witch to find a steady gig in town anymore. Pretty soon, all Witches are gonna flockin’ to bounty hunting and extermination jobs like magpies.”

A tut came from Yumichika’s direction, gathering up the bones and dropping them into travel bag sitting next to his hip. “Not Renji. From what I hear, you’re still selling magic, aren’t you? That’s going to turn on you sooner than later, you know.”

“Seriously? Dude, you can’t make money off of that! Tryina’ deal with those kinds of people is more trouble than it’s worth, and it’s not worth very much t’ begin with.”  
The lines of Renji’s shoulders rose, a tight knot tying itself around in his stomach. “Hey- as long as people are willing’a buy, I’m willing’a sell. And people are always willing to buy. It’s easy if you’re good at it.”

“I suppose not everyone can handle the kind of high-stake work we do.” Yumichika sighed, then fluidly snapped the paper out of Renji’s hands within the same breath.  
Renji makes a point to try and interject defensively here, with what he isn’t sure. Fortunately or unfortunately, he’s spared from that embarrassment when Ikkaku cranes his neck at him, head tilting and eyes narrowing. Some invisible string that caught his eye. It’s a dangerous look.

“… You having trouble with jobs or something? Do you need help with money.” He says, very frankly. And then in a much more stern voice, as if Renji were still his apprentice. Low and grim. “You can’t let yerself stay stuck on that Kira forever. If you need some help-”

“Wow, guess what this conversation is about! Not that” Renji blurts automatically, adjusting the collar of his sweatshirt with fussy hand-movements. There’s a roaring in his ears of blood heating up inside his body, but he wills it to calm down and for himself to be calm as well. “Where Rukia, again? You said she was with breakfast, right? Rukia and breakfast.”

Yumichika rolls up the paper and jabs it down the hall, in the direction of the community kitchen. Two sleeplessly ringed eyes watch Renji stride down that way with hands in his pockets and tension written down his back.

A Witch’s coven is a den, any place a group of Witches can make their own. Not much of them persists in the history books, only that in the olden times there were entire communities, though those were legally dispersed in not so legal ways. Shanty towns and nomadic convoys, all constructed by Witches for communal living. They’re a place for brainstorming, a place for magicfolk to be among their own people, and for some its a place to lick one’s wounds.

The Bayside’s communal kitchen is a convenience of this factor, and part of every resident’s rent goes into keeping it stocked and maintained. The rent is, believe it or not, based on the honor system, so once in a while Renji sends a silent prayer to at least one of the gods who is a shareholder on his immortal soul that the place stays afloat. So far, at least, everything has been working out.

At the end of the hall on the ground floor, the thick carpet breaks away into seafoam green linoleum. A pale, dishwater yellow travels up the walls in faded stripes, the assumed once-bright colors faded down with years of age and love.

As is usual, Renji just barely avoids hip-checking a lime-green counter that has been placed treacherously close to the doorway. The air smells consistently like cherry cigarettes and take-out food, but for this rare occasion there’s something else wafting through the air. The smell of toast, specifically burning toast, which stands to reason with Rukia sitting just over at the kitchen table.

“I grilled you a cheese.” Rukia announces, sliding two slabs of bread brazed to the color of charcoal and leaking orange material towards the seat opposite to her. Her nails, painted a deep purple, are dabbed with plasticy yellow around the cuticle.

“A cheese, you say?” Renji echoes, dramatic wonderment inserted into his tone as he pulls aside one of the metal and polyester chairs. “Grilled for me?”

“The powers that be have seen fit to send their miracles through my being, and you are very welcome for the generosit- you better eat that sandwich, you ungrateful sack of shit.” Rukia says without pausing for breath as she watches with rapt attention Renji taking a bite and then make a face, opening his mouth wide and sticking out his tongue to display burnt bits of cheesy toast.

“You’re disgusting.”

“I am a delight.” Renji counters, swallowing down the cheesy gravel anyways. “But that has nothing to do with what we should be doing right now, which is devising a cunning plan. I need a restock for my ingredients. As long as I’m shopping, we could get some stuff and put together some big magic, just like we did when we were kids.”

“What we did when we were kids wasn’t magic, it was sinning against nature.” Rukia raises a fine brow at him and folds her arms against the table. No doubt, she still remembers a certain unfortunate event involving playing with a spell circle that turned her hair into swamp grass. Ah, but to be a young and naive Witchling again.

“I mean- yeah, but we still do that.” Renji admits with a grumble, fully aware that incident will hang over his head forever.

Rukia taps her nail against the table top, varnish putting hairline-fracture dents in the surface. “Actually, I was hoping you’d be thinking about a different plan. The one you’ve been, you know, avoiding.” She says, and tilts her head down a fraction to give Renji a serious look from under heavy lashes.

“Accusez-moi?”

“J’accuse.” She agrees sternly, eyes pinning him to the chair. “I mean about you moving out and getting your own place again.”

Renji has to swallow hard before being able to burst out in response, hands dropping his sandwich and exasperatedly gesticulating in the air. “I just moved in!”

“Three months ago!”

“That’s not even a year. Why should I move out, anyways? I pay rent. I go to work. I don’t stay up and keep the neighbors awake playing that new-fangled loud music what all us young people are into these days.”

“That’s not the point.” Rukia insists, but her tone deflates on the last note.

Rukia’s shoulders, wrapped tight in a fly-away ridden cardigan, tighten. And not for the first time, Renji worries about how much stress can fit on those shoulders at once, digging into the lines on her back like pins.

She brushes bangs away from her forehead, to better think over what she wants to say without distraction. “It’s because you don’t have to live here. You could do better if you had your own place, but instead you’re sitting on your big ass in a tiny apartment just wasting time. No ones supposed to live at Bayside forever.”

“Hmm. Really now?” Renji pondered, quietly as his brewing irritation would allow him. Rukia’s advice and concern, though usually warranted and helpful, was often laced with more brutality than it needed. Experience had taught Renji that attempting to engage this with equal venom leads nowhere, especially when she’s trying her best to be helpful. “I seem to recall that you’re sort of, y’know- my neighbor? If you really think there are better options, why don’t you move out and show me up?”

“Don’t say that like you think I’m bluffing!” The smaller Witch snaps automatically, fingers gripping the edge of the table. She inhales and finds her center again, and in a more controlled tone she grumblingly admits. “I’m working on it. I’ve got something going on in the city- I don’t wanna say a lot in case it doesn’t pan out. But it’d be a good opportunity, lots of work and connections. I could move into a nice neighborhood, even. Get a loft or something.”

The way she admits it is like a secret guilt, which Renji notes his fairly typical of her. It is, of course, his job to overcompensate her lack of enthusiasm by elbowing her across the table to lift her solemness. “A’right, fine. You’ve significantly humbed. You can show me up even more after you get the job and the fancy loft and waltz back into my neck of the woods to rub my nose in it- and then, hopefully, let me crash on the couch in your fancy loft. Best friend. Old buddy. Platona-Pal. Amigo.”

“Stop this!” She demands, poorly attempting to disguise a faint grin as she shoves his massive arm away with her much tinier hands. “I told you, it’s not a done deal! But okay, you can be a loser who sleeps on my couch and has to make me breakfast and do the laundry while I’m at work like my domestic.”

“Wow, thanks. You’re the worst best friend ever.”

“Yeah.” Rukia agrees, pushing against his elbow. “But seriously- promise me you’ll look for a new place. We can add it to the errands list. I’ll go shopping with you, and then you have to look at real estate with me. Sounds fair?”

A groan is pushed from Renji’s throat, and he feels his feet grow tired already from the thought of the excursion. “What are you, my mother? Gods. Fine. Get’cher coat, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

The weather is clear when Rukia’s loafers clap against the sidewalk, her little black purse bouncing against her hip. “You know, you could probably afford a place with more storage space. I mean, not lot more. But more. Then you could keep bigger stocks of your ingredients, and you wouldn’t be so disorganized. You waste money making so many trips to apothecaries and stuff.”

“Thanks for the protip, Hypocrite Harriet.” Renji snorts, adjusting the strap on his bag so the blocky weight of his toolkit wouldn’t sit so awkwardly digging into his back. “You can talk t’ me about how my quality of life should be when we start house hunting, but I already told you you’re in no position to start until then. Let’s just get started.”  
The taller Witch attempted to take the lead, ultimately failing as Rukia’s tiny legs consistently worked to keep ahead of him and march down the road.  
Bayside is, as one might imagine, situated close to the harbor. There’s a large majority of otherwise progressive people who never bother to change things down here for the sake of the smell of rotting fish and the rusty, metal tones of fishermen and magicfolk alike. The bay also happens to be a convenient place to dump sacrifices after one is finished with them for rituals. Of course, a more spacious, outdoorsy environment would be ideal for that, as if Renji would have any luck at finding a place like crammed between the blocky canyons of city buildings and towers.

Maybe Rukia has a point about him moving out. Maybe Renji knows that he’s doing with his own life and she can leave him alone for a hot minute. Endless possibilities.

It’s still early, and the streets are pleasantly hushed. The sidewalks clack with the sounds of people making their way to work or wherever people do on a Sunday morning. It’s almost nice- aside from it being morning and all in the first place.

“Is Momo working at the shop today?” Rukia asks, finally allowing Renji to catch up to her for the sake of her own breath. Long legs: 1. Rukia: 0.

Renji shrugs, and the thought of Momo coupled with the edge of his kit digging a hole between his vertebrae reminds him he needs Fire Tears. “Dunno. There’s a good chance. You know she likes playin’ with the herbs and the surgical stuff down there.”

“Well, if she’s going to start making Greek Fire again, I’d rather she do it down there where Isane keeps salve on hand than back in the apartments.”

“Like that’s gonna stop her one way or another.”

Witch Culture has evolved into a stunning business venue, which is particularly impressive due to the fact that it’s largely about as efficient as it is self-destructive.

Renji had a brief stint working in the same apothecary as Momo, although she was more suited for it than he was. Better at preparing and mixing ingredients, concocting complicated spells and preparing elixirs to be sold. Generally the kind of thing that makes money in a practical context. Renji, on the other hand, excelled at splashing his blood everywhere and making his fingernails turn into teeth and now sells magic like he’s a walking carnival booth, which just goes to show you that everyone has a path carved out for them.

That was about the time he was still a Witchling, not even an apprentice, and the shop is probably all the better for his not being there anymore. Renji can see the little green tarp hanging over the doorway of the shop like a pop-tent. You don’t see many non-magic people walking in to a well-known Witching shop, at least not without a guilty look and a quiet sense of discomfort, so the venue looks deceptively quiet. At least from the outside.

Rukia attempts to dart ahead of him, reaching for the brass door handle, but is impeded by Renji’s grip on her jacket yanking her backwards. With nothing shorter than a string of curses and a determined foot on his heel, she manages to follow him through the doorway.

“Surprise!” Renji announces, slouching through the threshold and into the storefront. “It’s us!” Before narrowly dodging something small and goopy and traveling at very high speeds towards his person that splatters on the door window.

Nanao Ise’s voice is the first that reaches him clearly, greeting them both with a cautionary demand. “Watch your step. We’re doing inventory today.”

It’s not the easiest sort of demand in the world to make. Much like the natural habitarium that is Bayside, the apothecary is chaotic and disorganized in a very exact and purposeful way. Jars and bottles and glass orbs full of things glitter disorientingly from every corner of the building, with strings of electric lights tangled overhead like spiderwebs.

This is all well and good for many customers, but Renji has to duck his head lest his hair get tangled in the wires.

Rukia tiptoes across the floor like she’s wary of snakes hiding under the tables of price-stamped specimens, which wouldn’t be totally uncalled for. “We won’t be in your way long, Miss Ise. Renji’s doing his inventory today, too.”

By the front counter, a gruesome scene is being laid out. Three Witches wrapped up in mint-green medical gear pinning open some large, unidentifiable lump of furry critter next to the cash register

Isane Kotetsu’s mouth makes an ‘o’ shape from underneath her surgical mask. “You are? That’s great! It’s been so quiet around here today.”

“I couldn’t imagine why.” Renji says while unbuttoning his coat. The heel of Rukia’s shoe digs into his toes and he amends with, “No offense, ladies.”

Nanao neatly removes one rubber glove to push her glasses up on her nose and give him a faintly bemused but familiar look, expertly avoiding the lens but seemingly unaware of the ruddy red smudge just over her eyebrow. “Of course.” She then leans over to Momo Hinamori standing between her and Isane and holding the tongs. “We can finish this up in a moment. Hinamori, could you check Mr. Abarai’s vials? Kotetsu and I will go through our stock.”

Momo doesn’t appear to need much more invitation than that to release the tongs and stop staring into the abyss of the mystery animal’s stomach cavity. “I’m on it!”  
The apron, gloves, and mask are peeled off and disposed in plastic bin before Momo bounces over to meet them. “Hey, guys! I was starting to wonder when you’d need to come back here.”

“Yeah, well. You know us.” Renji leans on one of the tables, all cool and confident. “Regular vagabonds.” And then removes his hand with a start because what the fuck just brushed up against his wrist? A small tower of books is knocked over in the process, sending the mystery ball of fuzz shooting off the table and onto the floor to twine around Momo’s shoes.

Momo’s Familiar meows once, big blue eyes looking up at her meaningfully until she bends down and let’s the cat leap onto her shoulder and steady herself when the young Witch stands back up. “Sorry about that, Renji. Snapple’s been awful jumpy lately.”

Snapple shakes her head a little as if to shake off some dust acquired from her romp on the floor, and the skull-charm on her collar jingles. Momo has a matching barrette pinning back her bangs.

Rukia taps Renji’s elbow before he has the chance to make a comment about how in his experience cats are always jumpy around him while he picks up some fractured pieces of his dignity. “C’mon, ‘Vagabond.’ You were here to shop, I recall.”

“Right. Jeeze. Hold your horses, you got nowhere t’ be.” Renji belligerently removes the strap for his tool kit and vial case from around his shoulder, setting both down on the now clear table space.

Momo neatly undoes the clasp, rolling out the little drawers and shelves with the tips of her fingers skimming over the mouths of each vial. They sing as her finger pads traces around the glass lips.

“Low on nightshade…. yarrow… yew berries… We might not have very much of that. Those don’t ripen until spring.” Momo hums thoughtfully, taking out containers to examine the contents. Unlike any other reasonable sort of person. Momo has never needed a labeling system to interpret Renji’s lack of a system. She knows just about every potion and ingredient like a walking, talking Witch Encyclopedia. “You’re running low on nails, eyes, toes and teeth. All the gross stuff, I see. I know that using animal-based products in your spells adds that nice, macho punch you’re looking for, but a little winterberry goes a long way.”

Renji shrugs his shoulders and Momo slides the vials back into place, both knowing full well that the probability of Renji changing his ways are slim to none.

A larger jar is slid out from the bunch, wide as at least several of the smaller tubes, which Momo squints at. “For ear bones?”

“Kidney stones.” Renji corrects her, and she nods knowingly.

She lifts the case up into her arms. “That’ll be easy. I’ll help Nanao and Isane get most of this stuff from the shelves, but you can just grab the stones from there.” Her head bobs towards the direction of the opened animal on the desk. “Kidneys’ already dissected. Just pluck ‘em out with the tongs.”

Renji gets as far as the first syllable of “You’re not-” Before Momo spins around on her heels and bounds over to her co-workers. Well fuck him, then. “Nevermind.”

He waits a bare moment before tapping Rukia on the shoulder. “I don’t suppose you wanna-”

“Nope.” Rukia points toward the desk. “All yours. Have a blast.”

“Great.”

For some reason, Rukia sees now as a good time to start an amiable chat while Renji pokes around with the tongs. Her footsteps tap over to where Isane is opening drawers on the top shelves and handing them down for Momo to organize. “Sooo… You said it was quiet today? That’s unusual for the weekends.”

Isane looks down a little sheepishly before answering. “Well, it’s not really unexpected. Most of the streets and shops are cleared. There’s supposed to be some big event in the middle of town today. At the Cathedral or something. I didn’t look into it, it’s none of our business what they do over there.”

“Eh?” Renji’s attention hones in, dropping the metal tongs as he leans over the desk. “What kinda ‘event?’”

Isane’s mouth twists like she’s deciding how to answer, but is interrupted by a sharp “tsk”-ing from Nanao in the back room. “Probably another attention-grabbing ceremony to raise donations and awareness, as if they needed it.” Something between a sigh and a grumble escaped her, mumbled lowly as if not certain she wanted to be heard. “As if they’re never in the public eye enough, they have to perform ‘miracles’ to keep the non-magic masses enthralled. All show-boating.”

“The Old Gods choose their worshippers strangely.”

“‘Old Gods’.” The Witch scoffed, hoisting a crate full of ivy-covered bones into the main room and setting it down with a huff. “Old Gods and Prophets and priests doing phony magic and calling it ‘miracles.’ These are the real dark ages.”

Momo’s head snaps up, looking at Nanao with wide eyes. “The priests aren’t phonies.” The words tumble out in a sudden blurt, and the young Witch looks like she regrets them as soon as she says them, shrinking smallishly. “I mean- I don’t care about the Church and I think a lot of the stuff they do is ridiculous but.” She makes the mistakes of letting her eyes wander, up until they land on Renji and her face tints red like frustration. “Some of the priests might be the real thing.”

The carved beast on the slab of desk squelches from the inside as Renji’s hand twists around in it’s guts. Thick and dark juice runs down his elbow Momo’s face flashes from uncertain to horrified cringing. “Renji, I told you to use the tongs!”

Eyes turn to Renji, who isn’t quite so pleased at that, and freezes with his arm sunk into the animal’s gut. “I am not a surgeon.”

“You could have at least worn the gloves.”

“We have a sink.” Isane placates, albeit a little tiredly, and pushes the last drawer closed. “That should be it. You can clean up and check out, as long as you don’t drip on my floors.”

Renji barely has the strap over his shoulder to his now significantly heavier case adjusted and his foot off the patio of the apothecary when Rukia asks him point-blank. “So do you want to check out this ceremony?”

He doesn’t have to wait before responding flatly. “Why?”

“It might be kind of cool.” Rukia’s legs work double-time to keep up with his loping gait, but she doesn’t look over to make eye contact. Renji knows this look well, when Rukia’s mouth is a fixed into a straight line and her eyebrows are tensed together. She’s trying very hard to be nonchalant but she’s failing, wearing her patience thin. “Stupid, obviously, but cool. You never know. And we could see what the Church is really up to.”

Renji doesn’t respond.

“It would only take a second.”

“I thought you wanted to get me a house.”

“It won’t hurt you. Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

“Yeah.” So they don’t.

-

The adventure into the depths of real estate should surprise no one, especially with Renji’s vastly unimpressive budget. Rukia opens the door to a nice, cozy apartment with clean plaster walls and functional angles. Renji stands in the center of the foyer for all of four minutes and doesn’t like it. Rukia takes him to a quaint little cottage not too far from town, where the walls are made of aged stone and feel gritty to the touch. Renji trips over a crooked floor panel walking in and immediately leaves.

And then Rukia, who could predict Renji’s behavior like a lab rat in a maze, takes him to a run-down house too far from town to be even slightly convenient. The floorspace is spacious (which is another word for drafty and inconvenient) and dark and gloomy and nothing looks like it’s been touched in the last twenty years. They find toenails in the crawlspace and as Rukia begins looking for the rest of the body, Renji falls in love with the place instantly.

“You’re killing me, dude.”

Rukia’s body hits the dusty couch cushions, which instantly attempt to swallow her into their pillowy grasp while also exhaling clouds of filthy dust. The floorboards groan and complain under her weight. “This is, without a doubt, the shittiest house I’ve ever seen. This is the house where people get killed in the first fifteen minutes of a horror movie. This might be the very room that people get killed in in the first fifteen minutes of a horror movie.”

Renji lovingly caresses the stairway banister, raining chips of ancient paint onto the hardwood floor. “I love it like my own first-born.”

“You did hear me when I said ‘shittiest place ever’, right?” Rukia groans, and massages her temple with two fingers. “No, of course you didn’t. You have a rare and extraordinary condition where you can’t hear anything except a dull roaring in your ear and a constant inner monologue saying uncertainly ‘I’m sure it’s all fine.’”

“Well, you’re not wrong. But c’mon, look! It’s already furnished at everything.” A desperate gesture is thrown around the living room, at the rickety coffee table that Rukia places her feet on top of, and the matted rug tangling into itself on the floor.

“It was furnished, like, a hundred years ago.” Rukia huffs and moves to fold her arms over her chest. “Renji, I know your weirdness is very important to you, but seriously reconsider.”

But Rukia would have an easier time just moving the house itself than moving Renji’s stance, and he disagrees firmly. “No, I will throw a lovely house party here. It’ll be a banger. I like it.”

“It’s really far away from town, this place. You’d basically be out here in the woods alone most of the time.” Rukia points out, and her voice becomes softer. Testier. More knowing.

Renji’s hands glide over the banister, finding some comfort in the aged wood. The solidary, closed-in walls. His mind makes an attempt to float up the stairs and above the roof to some place he doesn’t want it to go, but he reals it back in with a shrug and a stubborn voice. “I’ve lived in the city for so long. Maybe I’d like t’ be alone once in a while.”  
It’s quiet for about a minute, which is about a minute too long, before Rukia exhales quietly and reaffirms her grip on the armrests so she can pull herself free from the couch. “Well, since you are nothing if not precocious, I have to concede defeat. If you can get the paperwork in by the end of the week, you can probably move in right away. Renji, meet old shit-house. Old shit-house, Renji. I’m sure you two will be very happy together.”

“Nice!” Renji thrusts his fist into the air, a toothy grin splitting his face and floorboards creaking under his feet. “This is gonna be the best rager- we’ll have a kegger and a blood circle and everything- no, wait! Two blood circles.”

“I have no doubt. Just give this place a good dusting before you have anybody over. I feel like I’m inside a casket here.” Her footfalls aren’t as noisy on the rickety floors as Renji’s are, but Rukia’s punctuated steps still tap-tap-tap all the way back to the hall and the front door.

“‘Inside of a casket’ would be an awesome party theme.” Renji lopes in front of her with his fist wrapped around the brass door handle to release the two of them back into the fresh air. A warm evening breeze floods in and Rukia takes a deep and grateful breath.

“As long as you’re happy. I’ll just be glad that you’re excited to move out.” Rukia sighs and treads past Renji to the porch.

There’s a moment where Renji looks back inside as reality revisits him, and he grapples with the consequence of the decision he just made. Leaning around the threshold, Renji stares down shady hallways and aged walls. It’s somber, and a fixer-upper to say the least. But it’s all his.

Dust rains down from the ceiling, accompanying a rapid-fire thwump-thwump-thwump from somewhere above. Some dirt in the air manages to drift its way into Renji’s nose, foul-smelling and musty and sour, and he sneezes before glaring at the ceiling. “Need t’ look into some extermination spells, first.”

Rukia’s voice calls him back to the porch stairs. “What?”

“Raccoons or something.” The door swings behind Renji, locking the house back into it’s solidary lonesomeness.

-

Some facts about the shitty house that Renji bought:

Rukia wasn’t kidding when she said it needed a good dusting. There’s dust. Everywhere. It’s quite possible that, in this house, there is more dust than anywhere else in the entire world. In the world’s highest ratio of dust to house, this house has the highest ratio. Possibly, there is more dust than there is house.

Armed with a tiny vacuum cleaner that needs to be plugged in every half an hour, Renji stomps his way upstairs to a symphony of squeaks and creaks underneath him and noisily wipes away years of abandonment with pure willpower and lots of extension cords.

Surprisingly, it’s not half bad when cleaned. On the bottom level there’s a living room, filled with overstuffed armchairs so ugly they can’t even pass as kitsch. There’s a kitchen that needs to be thoroughly scrubbed for fungus but will suit Renji’s needs perfectly fine as long as Renji doesn’t cook. Which is perfect, because aside from the rare chemical concoction to be drained into a beaker and sold, he doesn’t plan to cook at all. There’s even a big fireplace where Renji could put a cauldron if he ever felt like really going retro, but with self-heating cauldrons all the rage nowadays that feels like a lot of trouble to go to, compared to just buying the downloadable upgrade.

The upstairs isn’t too horrific. Renji claims the modestly-sized master bedroom with a half-bath for sleeping and, more importantly, collecting huge piles of things until it resembles his apartment back at Bayside.

The point where Renji should have made the obvious assumption is when he saw the room at the end of the hall. The one with the sign on the door that said KEEP OUT and was shaped like a racecar.

Looking inside it is like looking at a grainy old photo album. Like watching Saturday morning cartoon reruns. Between the car track still laid out on the floor and the band posters on the wall, Renji guesses somewhere just before tween age. Nine to eleven, maybe? Possibly more than one answer, judging by the bunkbed pushed into the corner.

Spooky. Renji has to wonder how he’s gonna spin this to Rukia. ‘Hey, you remember that creepy, haunted-looking house I bought? Yeah, you’ll never believe what I found!’

For the record, Renji doesn’t believe in ghosts. He doesn’t believe in them because he actively knows that they already absolutely exist, so whether he does or does not believe in them is moot. As an experienced Witch, he’s done his own fair share of ghost shenanigans, and it’s really no big deal. Yes, it goes without saying that when it comes to Renji Abarai, paranormal extraordinaire, he ain’t afraid of no ghost.

He is especially not afraid of them after setting out banishment candles. White for cleansing, black for banishing evil. A sprig of agrimony set on the windowsill on a sock he filled with soil. The sock wasn’t a necessary part of the charm, but his pots haven’t come in yet.

Another interesting little factoid that Rukia wasn’t kidding about- it’s way away from town. Like, cottage in the woods type of deal. That has it’s upsides. No more ringing bells or tripping over everybody at Bayside, Renji has the whole place to himself.

It’s fine. He can still go into town to see people and buy groceries and sell his wares and stuff. There are long nights that rattle around these empty hallways. No one complains when he’s up at ungodly hours to do rituals or when there are explosions. But he doesn’t have neighbors to see when he makes the trek to his mailbox, and he can’t make anyone get rid of the spider in the corner for him. And maybe for that, he’s just a little too quick to dismiss the off-kilter and suspicious as his own mind playing tricks on him.  
After all, it’s easy to get paranoid. He just has to get used to it, learn not to look for an invisible enemy to blame for every bump and groan. Because it’s far too easy to let one’s guard down when one spends the night alone.

The third thing about the house is that Renji maybe sort of kind of made a huge mistake.

-

The day Renji finds it, it’s raining. It’s raining and there’s a leak thats soaking through the ceiling, with the seemingly dire purpose to drip filthy rainwater into Renji’s bowl of wheaties, which is also his midnight snack. Renji himself, who was fetching said snack because he hadn’t been sleeping well, spends a consecutive five minutes hoping the problem will solve itself and wishing the rain a hearty fuck you before submitting to the call for action.

He’s lived here for about a week. Most of his possessions are still in cardboard boxes, making an obstacle course and very efficient way for this Witch to stub his toe from every angle imaginable. A hand still has to palm the walls blindly for a lightswitch, bat at the empty air for the cord that pulls down the stairs to the attic. The struggle in getting stairs to unfold reminds Renji of the places still unexplored in this house.

Because even Renji has some idea of sacredness. And he doesn’t know what this house’s deal is, why the last family is gone and they left all their stuff behind. And he’s not going to immediately say something like they all died, because it would stupid to just assume the worst possible scenario. And even if they did die, it doesn’t make any lick of difference to him.

Why should it matter that he’s sleeping in the room where two parents might have slept after a long day of taking care of each other and the rest of their family? That a bed where two people who loved each other might be the one that they got up from and never went back to one day?

Who cares if Renji doesn’t have the heart to throw out the children’s things yet? Rukia would probably just tell him he was being insensitive for tossing out all the old crap anyways. So yes; many things around this house remain unchanged. So it’s not too much of a surprise to Renji that he’s failed to check out the attic before.

At least until tonight, when he ascends the stairs armed with a pan to catch the drips, roll of duct tape for everything else, and an enchantment that turns his thumb into a wax candle for light. It’s very tingly.

This is the part in the horror movie where Renji gets killed, which is a fact that occurs to him as he stands on the top of the stairs and tries to squint into the darkness that his candlelight doesn’t reach. Shockingly, he lives long enough to venture further.

He’s not sure what it is he’s found at first. The candlelight reaching across the floor and bending around the shadow in the corner ,around the shapeless something sitting there nestled between the walls. Renji almost believes it’s an object covered by a black tarp at first, and nearly reaches to touch it.

But it doesn’t wait for him to act upon it. It shudders, and exhales, and everything goes alarmingly wrong alarmingly fast. There’s a crash like cannonfire ripping wood to splinters, a crashing of claws that unfold from the shape and bury themselves into the floor and the walls like craters. The thing lifts itself up onto spindly legs and Renji, self-proclaimed hardass and whatever other advertisements occur to him, lurches backwards only to trip over an ancient and forlorn baseball bat. His concentration shatters like a broken window and so with it does the spell, and the attic is plunged into blackness.

Even in the dark, lights pop in Renji’s eyes and the beginnings of a knot begin to swell at the back of his skull. Something wet and cold drips onto his cheek, and from the suspicious consistency, Renji is willing to bet that it’s not rainwater.

Renji begins to seriously consider the possibility that an awesome house party and a bad break-up may not be worth buying a cottage in the middle of the woods where no one can find his dismembered body, and that his untimely death will be a massive inconvenience to his business venture.

“Oh.” Renji squeaks in a very uncool way. “Fuck.”

He pushes himself up with enough force to fling his body into another pile of abandoned junk, just in time to catch the flashing of teeth digging into the floorboards. The attacking thing grumbles lowly and loudly, like a ravenous stomach growling.

Reclaiming some of his survival instincts and no small lack of mortal terror as motivation, Renji squeezes his eyes shut and makes himself focus against the noise of fangs prying free like a dozen crowbars peeling apart two-by-fours. When he opens them, light buzzes in his brain and an electric flickering fills his vision with yellow light.  
The beast looks him right in the eyes, massive skull craning down on a snake-like neck from it’s long and enormous body. It is giant, with skin like an oil-slick except it doesn’t shine in the glow, it just soaks the light in. Ropes of a matted and greasy mane dripping down from it’s neck and around the ghostly dull pallor of it’s face. The wall behind it is visible through the head-sized chunk missing in the middle of it’s chest, truly and literally heartless.

Fragments of the floor still stick stubbornly in it’s maw, which itself is a cave of deadly-looking knives sunken into a mask of pure white bone. Renji sees nothing in the eye-cavities, like he could plunge his hand in and it would go forever.

Assuming he could try and live to tell the tale. The hollow opens it’s pit of razor fangs, into which a set of little teeth- tiny, itty bitty human teeth- is barely visible and hisses with a sound like fire dry crackling. A screaming inferno.

Renji feels himself sink, and he drops down, down, way down. Into the only place he knows for sure he can be safe.

Entering the Witch Way is like soaking his head in ice water. The fear of the beast in his attic doesn’t help Renji’s concentration, so he’s not thoroughly surprised when he gets spat back up in his living room, straight onto the couch and bouncing a little on the lofty cushions.

This is the part where Renji should be doing some problem solving. How he’s going to navigate his network through the Witch Way to get to safety. If he even has the energy for that right now when every inch of him is instinctively willing himself to destroy the monster, remove the immediate and present danger. Which is laughable. Because Renji is not a knight or a hunter. He doesn’t have the power to charge spooky beasties alone in the night, let alone a hollow of all things. Hollows aren’t even supposed to be real. This can’t be happening. This is trouble.

A sound like ‘Thwump’ above Renji’s head has him glancing nervously at the ceiling. The idea had been that if Renji left the hollow alone, it would return the favor, but maybe Renji has made himself just a little too present to be ignored.

Life in danger. Too scared for magic. Must use physical self to overcome problem. If Renji is in the living room right now, he can get to the walk-in hall and out the front door and he’s home-free. They always say hollows are territorial, right? It must be, otherwise it wouldn’t have waited so long to come out of hiding. He’s just gonna be careful about it.

Renji darts towards the door, eyes locked in the door and on escape, only to skid and scramble to a halt when a roll like thunder pounds its way down the stairs and the monster leaps into the doorway, blocking off the exit with a massive set of snapping teeth. Alright, fuck the door then. Renji didn’t care much for that door in the first place. Just. Fuck it.

Renji’s sneakers skid as he backtracks through the other side of the hallway and into the kitchen. New plan. Break a window and jump out of it. But that plan, too, immediately goes down the drain when this attic-dwelling asshole comes up hot on Renji’s trail. Something heavy like an arm or maybe an absurdly thick skull slams him into his back and the last thing Renji sees is the other side of the kitchen coming at him very quickly before his forehead makes contact with the fridge and everything blurs out.

-

When we rejoin our hero, Renji is coming to consciousness with the discovery that he is still in his physical realm. It will be a cause for celebration once his vision lines back up and his head stops pounding.

For a minute he actually thinks he’s back at Bayside, if only because its so noisy. He got used to waking up to all kinds of weird sounds from people going about their own strange business there, a noise like a garbage disposal ripping through jello and bubblegum would be a perfectly logical assumption to make and then roll over in bed to ignore.

Except Renji is not at Bayside, which occurs to him with the realization that he is also very brutally mauled. Presumably. It makes more sense for Renji to be dead than to not be dead. But there his eye goes, cracking open and finding the wreckage-edition of his kitchen. That monster that Renji assumes he had been eaten by is still there too, which is fun.

The gluttonous grinding noise happens to be coming from said monster. And of all the things that Renji has witnessed in his colorful career as a magic user, a hollow with it’s head in a plastic baggie of raw bacon has not been one of them before. That hollow is eating Renji’s bacon. Renji was going to eat that bacon. Maybe being cooped up in this old house with no one to feed on for so long, raw meat is far more distracting and enticing than having to chase down live prey.

Renji very slowly, very quietly pushes himself into an upright sitting position. Something (probably part of the fridge) cracks underneath him and draws the beast’s empty eyes back to him. Cavernous pits of blackness hover on Renji’s shape, but the bag is still clenched in bony paws like the hollow isn’t quite sure it wants to commit and abandon the convenient snack.

There’s something soft and cold and squishy under Renji’s hand. Is that the leftover sausage he had last time he went out? He risks moving enough to shovel out the styrofoam box oozing grease around the crushed package.

The noise has the hollow’s jaw unhinging and a long, drooly tongue darting out of it’s maw, but it’s focus is clearly more on the potent meat than on Renji’s soul. The Witch holds the container out temptingly, inane curiosity combating concern for his own well being for dominance. He hears his own voice before his mind approves of the action, nervously babbling. “Hey there big guy… girl… it… whatever you are.”

Apparently equally as curious, the hollow lopes closer still with joints crooked out like a spider. A snuffly noise that must be it’s nose blows rotten air into Renji’s face. “You want the snausages, fella? Yeah, you’re just a hungry lil’ soul-sucking monster. You don’t want a nasty Witch soul, trust me.”

Whether or not the creature is listening is not apparent, but the sausage is tossed in a leap of faith to the floor, slapping in front of the hollow’s paw. The long neck leans way down to sniff and paw before the tongue squirms back out and slurps the meal up. A low, rumbly noise is made, which Renji chooses to interpret as a sound of satisfaction.  
Relief is short-lived, because as soon as the sausage and bacon have both disappeared into the hollow’s pit of a mouth, it’s shadow descends back on Renji, still prone and packed in to kitchen debri. “Oh boy.”

He’s glad he did grocery shopping recently.

-

The rule of thumb is that when you feed a stray, it will just keep coming back. Another rule is that when you’ve found something so rare and mysterious that records doubt such a thing exists, and you happen to be a creative mind of knowledge and ambition, and that mysterious thing is discovered by you in your own attic like some dusty heirloom, it’s really fucking cool. You will never believe which rule Renji abides by.

Sure, some may have strong things to say. Things like ‘That’s incredibly dangerous to let that live in your home’, or ‘It’s massively irresponsible to for you, a self-employed entrepreneur, to throw a significant portion of your income to feeding a creature that would otherwise consume your immortal soul if it wasn’t so busy stuffing it’s face with whatever scrap meat you bought it’ or ‘Renji, this is the worst idea you’ve ever had’, the answer to all of which he could reply is ‘That’s simply not true.’

He says as much to Rukia, who is sitting on the porch and shrinking into her sweater with distaste at the leering eyes down the hall from the open front door. “Renji, out of every impulsively bad idea you’ve ever had, this is both the most terrible and most dangerous.”

“I’m sure there’s been more terrible and more dangerous.” Renji replies with a condescendingly comforting air, like this entire discussion is silly from start to finish, and he appears in the front hall with a full raw chicken dangling by the legs in one hand. It’s a little rotten and green around the gull, but that’s how he got it cheap. Or out of a dumpster. Take your pick.

“There really hasn’t.” Rukia glowers and edges closer to the threshold, as if she were dipping her toe in ice cold water.

The hollow tenses and curls it’s spine like it’s about to lunge with teeth snapping territorially. Rukia shies back at the same time Renji hooks his arm around the giant neck and uses the other to dangle the chicken in front of the hollow’s face.

The fowl vanishes with an unceremonial and ghastly crunch, and Rukia pales. It’s understandable. She hasn’t had the proceeding few weeks to get used to the shadowy presence. The touch-and-go points when either the hollow got a little too brave or Renji did, resulting in another destructive romp around the house in which Renji would dodge teeth and claws until a certain someone’s enormous head smashes into a wall or crashes into a ceiling that certainly wasn’t built to giant hollow proportions.

As the only living resident of the house and quite liking it that way, Renji might have been more bothered by these frequent attempts at eating him if not for the fact that it gave him something fun to do at home between work hours and social calls. And it’s certainly shaped up his skills in time manipulation. A simple wave of the hand and all the holes in the floor and the broken kitchen table are erased, clean as a whistle.

If you were to ask him, he might even suggest that he and the hollow are beginning to bond. Activity grows slowly but surely. Nights when Renji is in bed and can hear the clomping around the house like the skittering of a truly mutant oversized rat, but nothing barges in to rouse him from his rest and make him dissolve into shadows for safety.

“Don’t be like that.” Renji says, to both Rukia and the hollow, and then runs a hand through the tangles of a shaggy mane.

“Renji, you cannot keep that. A hollow is not a cat.” Rukia says sternly, once the beast is busy being pet and picking chicken bones out of its mask teeth.

“Too late. It’s mine and I love it.” Renji protests and wraps his arms around the hollow’s head like a child clinging to an enormous dog.

“What are you even going to do with a massive hollow?”

“Maybe I’ll name it Fluffly.”

“I- For fuck’s sake.” Rukia pinches her brow between her fingers. “Fuck this. Just. Fuck it.” She mutters and turns on her heels, beginning to stomp her way down the porch stairs.

“Hey!” Renji squints after her, ungluing himself from the hollow/Fluffy’s side to stick his upper half out the torso after her. “Where the hell are you going?”

Rukia turns back to him, an exasperated strain pulling her lips into a stubborn frown and an emphatic gesture shaking her hands about. “To find someone who’s almost as well-versed in your special kind of crazy as I am, and maybe we can double-team you into having a bare inch of common sense.”

“Rukia, c’mon!” Renji hops over the stairs and marches down the marshy lawn after her. “Just come back and say hi! I’m sure it’ll let you pet him if you give him a snausage.”

The hollow ventures as far as the doorway before flopping down and letting it’s body take up the entire front hall, making a noise between a deep rumble and a gurgle that could either mean “Not likely” or “Food.” Depending on how optimistic the interpreter was.

Development between Renji and his carnivorous housemate slowly evolves after that without due interruption. Fluffy (which Renji may or may not have started to regularly use as a name) continued to deplete Renji’s grocery bill in it’s neverending hunger and Renji found that even for it’s poor companionship, a hungry hollow is an excellent motivator to get on one’s feet and work.

It must become more apparent to Fluffy that Renji is not going anywhere, including off of it’s territory. It also becomes apparent that Renji is willing to feed the beast, and as Fluffy hasn’t had more than a morsel a good many years, this bargain works better in it’s favor. A key component of this deal is that Renji has to be alive, and so a begrudging acceptance was returned to the Witch’s morbid enamorment.

With a similar attitude comes the day that Renji is sprawled in his living room, sneakers dangling over the couch and the latest copy of Enchanting Fashions and Fashionable Enchantments (which he swears up and down he only reads for the ads) when something tries to slither under his ankles and actually lifts up the whole couch in the process like the world’s most ineffective automan.

A noise of displeasure exits Renji, but soon evaporates when he caught sight of the massive lump of shadows trying to slide it’s way around the floor. The self-heating cauldron Renji had set on the coffee table to heat the room as well as let his latest potion simmer for the next two hours glows in a red circles around the base and emits a heavenly wave of heat.

The hollow wraps itself around the coffee table to a degree where one could mistake that it was trying to tie itself in knots, soaking in the ray of heat. It’s back is pointedly facing Renji, though periodically that skull-faced, greasy head will lift up off the floor and look over it’s shoulder before dropping back down. An empty, soulless gaze shifts away very quickly when Renji makes eye-to-socket contact over his magazine.

“I didn’t say nothin’.” Renji smugly grins behind a repositioned paper and scans the articles. I may be his imagination, but he thinks he hear a mollified huff in response.

Eventually, by the time Renji gets home, the couch is already very much occupied and struggling to contain everything from neck to tail while the cauldron glows on the table.

A small bump in the road takes the shape of Rukia’s idea for an intervention.

-

One thing that pop culture got sort of right about Witches was apprenticeships. Witches don’t pass on their heritage or even their magic through bloodlines, so lineages are all but useless. In fact, one of the reasons Witches don't procreate with each other is the probability that the child wouldn't inherit the same abilities. Some kids get complexes over the fact that at their age, their parents were head cheerleaders or star baseball players or was the leading role in the school play. Now imagine that if your guardian had the ability to pull fire out of their pocket or summon a demon to do their algebra homework.

So when it comes to passing on Witchcraft to younger Witchlings, that all comes down to Witches taking on apprentices and teaching them the ABC’s of magic. Once a Witch completes their apprenticeship, they’re officially considered ready make their way in the world.

At a spry twenty years of age, the memories of Renji’s apprenticeship are still more than fresh in his mind. Ikkaku was an originally reluctant but eventually thorough instructor, and Renji still has some very colorful scars to prove it.

That in mind, Renji is mildly concerned to come home from getting the mail, a stack of bills and mail-in orders under one arm and an armful of wormroot in the other. He is wearing his comfy pajama pants, and he is still wearing them when he walks in to see an odd trio of Rukia reading off the top of a stack of Renji’s magazines, Yumichika preparing french toast on his stove. and Ikkaku sitting across from Rukia and close to demolishing the first batch of aforementioned french toast.

By this point, Renji has had his morning coffee and thus has the patience to process this. Also, it’s not the first time friends have randomly appeared at his home throughout the day, so he can’t say it’s all that unusual. However, he’s notices that friends are much less likely to make the trek out to his neck of the woods in the spooky house, especially if they know he’s keeping a literal monster in the attic.

If Rukia believes having a heart-to-heart with Ikkaku of all people is going to curb Renji’s reckless behavior, he can only be excited to watch this play out. He sits down and allows Yumichika to place a plate of french toast in front of him before giving Renji an enigmatic look and whirling back around to the stove.

“Where have you guys been?” Renji asks idly, shooting a glance out of the corner of his eye to Rukia, who has developed a specific interest on an article about glamor charms.

“South.” Ikkaku answers while helping himself to Renji’s very limited and very beloved supply of whipped cream. “Like. Real south. Noches Desert south.

That catches Renji’s attention. “The hell were you doing in Noches.”

“Oh, you know.” Yumichika cuts in just as Ikkaku opens his mouth, tone so sharp and scathing it could singe. “Some people get to go to tropical beaches for business trips. Some go to famous cities. But we- now we go hiking through exquisitely boring and miserable shitfields. Clearing out infestations of bandits and trolls and bandit-trolls by day scorching day and burning camel dung for the fire by freezing night. If anything, it was more of a vacation, really!”

Ikkaku waits to make sure that he’s well and truly finished before giving his own answer. “Out-sourcing. We just got back last night when we got a memo through the Way that was real insistent that we drop by.” A beady and tired glance is pointed in Rukia’s direction. “With the idea that once you have set your grubby lil’ paws on an idea, some force in this known world is gonna pry you away from it.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

Rukia slaps the magazine down on the table. “He gives it treats for not murdering him!”

“Anything would murder me if I just let it starve!” Renji argues pointedly, though the way his mouth makes those words doesn’t sound quite right to his ears.  
A burning, indignant glare under thin brows turns towards Ikkaku for support, to which he gives Rukia back a shrug. “He’s a grown Witch! He’s not even my apprentice anymore. I gave up the whole ‘mentor’ thing once I kicked his ass out!”

“Someone in this room please start being a rational human being.” Even as Rukia says this, all three eyes swivel around to Yumichika’s back, who pretends not to notice for a minute before turning around and offering his hands in a ‘woah there’ gesture with a placid expression.

“Don’t mind me. My hands are full just keeping Ikkaku alive, and I’m not yet experienced enough at that to worry about anything else.”

Ikkaku grunts in a way thats dismissive but not quite arguable. He twists back in the chair and folds his arms across his broad chest in a way that Renji recognizes from just before he’s about to be given a wholistically irritating and physically taxing chore. “A’right, fine. At least let me see the damn thing.”

This, Renji immediately knows, is easier said than done. Though the hollow has accepted Renji as a necessary endless supply of fresh and raw meats, no one else seems to be particularly worth it’s time. He tries to lure it down from the basement with a bloody steak and, when that fails, leaving it at the bottom of the pull-out stairs as a guide. When the waiting becomes too long and the smell too unbearable, Renji gives in to leading them upstairs himself.

Though ‘leading’ may be a strong term. But ‘poking his head up and angling a flashlight around like the periscope of a submarine’ doesn’t have that same bold tone to it.

“Hey there, big guy.” Renji whispers once he finds it, curled into the upper corner of the room and swiveling it’s head curiously, suspicious on why it smells meat and yet it has not been deposited into it’s mouth. Or maybe it just knows that Renji hasn’t come to feed it alone this time.

Ikkaku’s head rises behind Renji’s. “Holy shit.” He says, somewhere between fascination and stubborn disbelief. “That’s a big motherfucker.”

The hollow hisses, spitting huge wads of saliva before crawling it’s way further up and onto the ceiling. Renji presses his fingers to his lips and harshly shushes the beast, which seems to confuse it more than anything.

“Shh, it’s okay.” Renji tosses up the steak, which disappears in a flash of teeth and a brief tearing noise. “Ya’ see? Just bringing you a snack. You wanna come down from there? Say hi to some friends?”

The hollow makes a noise like a moan in response, complaining and scuttling around above their heads. Renji exhales and motions for Ikkaku to go back down the stairs. “Sorry, it looks like it’s just not feeling it. Stubborn brute.”

But Ikkaku isn’t listening to him. Ikkaku has a look of brows pinches together, mouth slightly agape, and eyes flashing dangerously. It’s the sort of look Renji might expect to get if he was about to be punched, or yelled at, or both at the same time.

“Outside.” Ikkaku growls with narrow pupils and a snarl pulling his lips. “Now. Alone.”

-

“No.” Is the first thing the older Witch says once they’ve gone down two flights of stairs and left Rukia and Yumichika to marvel at Renji’s freezer full of monster-snacks.

Renji groans in the back of his throat and tugs the zipper of his hoodie higher. “‘No?’ Is that it? C’mon, man.”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Ikkaku says, and some of his sternness reveals itself in his inflection. Not the kind that cropped up when he was chugging down an absurd amount of ale at a rager, or throwing himself into a dangerous job. The kind that was all discipline and slightly off-kilter wisdom. The kind that made him a mentor in the first place. “You’re not gonna bond your soul with that thing in there. You can’t, and more importantly you’re not gonna try.”

“What makes you think I’m gonna?” Renji asks in an outraged thing, but a spike of dread sinks into the core of him and Ikkaku just plows right on.

“Because this is so you, don’t even gimme that stupid look!” Ikkaku bites and makes a tight-handed motion like he wants to rip Renji’s head off. “A Familiar is not a pet! It’s serious dark magic and once you put part your soul into that thing, you’re never gonna get it back. And did it occur to ya’ that a hollow is already an impure human soul? So what the fuck is bonding your soul gonna do with it? I’ll tell you what- wait, no I won’t! Because nobody’s ever done it before!”

“Dude, It’s a hollow! People would do worse things just to even get close to a legend like that. Think of all that power I’d get in return. And guess what. My soul is already loaned out to three gods, so I really don’t think there’s all that much to lose!” Renji shoves his hands into his pocket like this is something he’s already thought in-depth about.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t pick your gods over a fucking year-old break up!” And if anything snaps Renji to full rigidity, full alert like electricity was poured down his spine, it’s that.

Ikkaku rubs his palm over his head, rushing through his words like this has been a long time coming. “We all get it, okay? We do. You made a mistake. You trusted the wrong person, and it blew up in yer face and made you feel like a dumbass, and now this whole- this everything; throwin’ yerself a pity-party and being all mopy back in Bayside, locking yourself up in this hellhole, feeding this thing inside and pretending it’s your friend and you can control it- it’s your mourning process or whatever. But this is going way too far and you’re gonna get hurt.” At the end, Ikkaku inhales, having exhausted his breath all in one fell swoop. His eyes look right next to Renji’s head and past him. “You’ve got to get over it sooner or later. Preferably sooner, before you do something you regret.”

Renji, dumbfounded and angry and with twelve months of hurt bottled up inside him all shaken up to the point of popping, bares his teeth and says with the sort of hard voice that doesn’t actually make him seem all that calm and icy when he tries to be, “Is that all you’ve got, or do you wanna be a little more personal. Go ahead and say something else I don’t know, like about my compulsive need to win or my tendency to be a spiteful piece of shit. Don’t hold back. Go on an’ act smart.”

“Shit. Gods above and below.” Ikkaku curses with an expression thats a little too enraged to be flat and a kind of look that just barely skates around pity. “I gave up on babysitting you when you became a Witch. You’re figuring this one out on your own.”

He blusters his way back through the door, leaving Renji standing on the porch. Through the doorway, he sees Yumichika give him look that could mean anything. The words ‘We all get it’ ring in Renji’s mind and strike a wrong tone.

They don’t come back through the door. Ikkaku and Yumichika melt into the Witch Way and are gone in a pool of red and purple sinking under the carpet.

Rukia at least has the grace to look curious and guilty when she shuffles past him on her way out, giving him big, doleful eyes from under heavy lashes and a mouth all tight like a padlock. Renji struggles with the idea of being obstinate with her before giving him and offering a harsh “What?” that makes her stand up resolutely.

“This is just because I’m worried about you. You know that, right?” She admits it, a little guiltily, and Renji has to admit that deep down he does. “And I know that to you, it probably just seems like I’m bugging you or trying to micromanage, but I do worry. Just- keep me in the loop.”

Renji wants to stuff his anger and embarrassment deep down inside of him and reply to that somehow. That Rukia isn’t bugging him and he does know that she just cares about his knuckle-headed self. He wants to go back and apologize to Ikkaku, who also is trying to help in his own way. He wants to go back and say a lot of things to people who were just trying to help him. He wants to go back and say and do a lot of things.

But Rukia slides away from him like wind over ice, finally exhausted from the emotional journey of Renji’s friendship and the maintenance that it requires, no doubt. She steps off the porch and slides into a shadow the color of blue winter evenings and purple sunsets and even that darts away into the void.

And Renji is left with a house, a hollow, and too many things he doesn’t care to think too deeply about tonight. It’s not even lunchtime and he’s ruined everything. That should be a new record.

-

The interesting thing about Familiar contracts is that no one’s entirely clear on what a Familiar contract is. What is represents is a close and deep bond between a Witch and their chosen companion.

It’s a powerful and intimate kind of magic, one that has fallen into obscurity in modern times due to lack of use. Ages and ages ago, when you were more likely to find a Witch living on the very outskirts of town, possibly in a shambling tower after having escaped from the latest execution attempt, having a Familiar was a matter of extreme convenience. Having a mobile and inconspicuous animal sidekick that could independently collect ingredients and information declined in usefulness with the development of modern conveniences such as teleportation magic and public transportation. But the idea behind it is when one knows they have met the creature they want to bind their soul to forever, the spell is all the stronger. It’s the kind of material that Witches associate with long-term life commitments like child-rearing, and people of the nonmagic variety usually take interest in only to measures of the extreme and uncomfortable.

That in mind, Renji’s not entirely sure how this sort of ritual is supposed to go down. He heaves his alter out of it’s duty old pocket dimension and puts it in a place that won’t cause unsightly rings on his clearly unkempt lawn. A rabbit is caught and sacrificed to his three gods, and his front yard is heavy with the perfume of fresh blood and singed fur. A second sacrifice is made, this one drained onto the altar from where a hot knife is dipped into the flesh of his own bicep. One becomes very good at sterilizing knives when Witchcraft is involved.

The rest of it is kind of a wing and a prayer. Rose candles for binding friendship and also to dampen the smell of dead forest creature. Maybe some crystals. Crystals are good for that kind of stuff, right? Reflection and beauty of nature and stuff, probably.

It takes a significant amount of stumbling through translations of old text, with some unsteady but devoted deciphering of duality symbols along the way. The hollow is coaxed downstairs (Though not, to Renji’s disappointment, to the call of “Fluffy”) so that it can lay down on top of Renji’s painstakingly drawn transcriptions on the floor and smear his careful lines.

“Alright. Just stay there.” Renji gestures at the hollow, which peers at him with slow and leering movements like feigned disinterest over genuine curiosity. “We’re in this together now, buddy.”

In response, the beast drops its tongue from it’s mouth and draws it sloppily over Renji’s face, which he takes as a supposed sign of approval.

But the most important aspect of any spell is the one greater than any ingredient or bell or whistle, and that’s the blessing of the Dark Gods. The contract above all contracts, since the magic that Witches use are really just loans from the higher powers who are worshipped by them. Dark Gods. Powerful spirits. Infernal and immortal creatures who protect the down-trodden and devoted.

Darkness has always been given a bad rap, from Renji’s perspective at least. And the harsh light of day can be brutal and violent, like the heat of a desert sun or the glint of steel. The darkness- his Darkness- is a power of healing and protection, cool and soft and safe. Before Renji had memories between day and night, before there was time or space or good or evil, he has memories of Their influence settling within his soft and adolescent imagination. A tangle of black tendrils like thorny brambles forming a cradle from which ingenuity could rise.

Renji contains that power, soaks it in and releases it back out. Those tendrils, those curls of smoke leaping off of his skin and under his teeth to spill out of his mouth and onto the floor. And he gives back to the universe what it gives unto him.

It feels suitable. The air pops and crackles with energy around the room, the space to which Renji has poured in his lifeforce. He knows, with absolute sureness, what he wants to do here, and that this is the right decision to make. The power, the loyalty. Everything he needs. And maybe it’s not entirely for selfless reasons, but that just gives him all the more drive to do it. The voice to utter the three most powerful words known to enchanters, summoners, and other brave souls.

“I invoke thee.”

Rukia receives an urgent phone call not twenty minutes later.

-

Renji meets her by the door, and is immediately struck with a feeling of transparency when she looks at him. Of no surprise, of course. When they were younger, Rukia never had a problem looking through tented fingers, a strained smile that didn’t show enough teeth to be real, and what she called his ‘caterpillar brows.’ And while normally, she might just give him a flat look and ask him point-blank what he managed to do, circumstances call for a more dramatic sense of tension.

Rukia’s kit resides in a very cute and (if you were to ask Renji when Rukia wasn’t around) very tacky polyester rabbit-shaped bag, and even with the strap tight around her shoulder, she clutches it with both hands like a shield. “I came over as fast as I-” Her pupils spin in their sockets as her eyes roll around the room and then finally focus on Renji in the center. What the hell happened to you? You look awful!”

“Thanks.” Renji probably could have guessed. But maybe not, because if Renji was any good at guesses, maybe he could have guessed that the amount of magic that spell soaked up would be way more than he was prepared to give. The physical toll is excruciating, and the emotional one isn’t exactly a blast either. Really in any other situation, Renji would be all set to go down for a very long nap until every muscle in his body stopped trying to mutiny against him, and just lie there and contemplate the feeling of emptiness inside him like a cup that isn’t filled all the way. But now is not that situation.

Rukia’s brain doesn’t seem quite sure how to process this, one hand going up to cover her mouth in concern and the other reaching out towards him. She gets a big-eyed, deep-frowned kind of look on her face, the way she did when she was little and wanted to try and mother someone out of sense of responsibility. Focus brings her back to clarity and she tightens her hands into tense fists.

“The hollow.” Rukia says importantly, still bearing her fist like she might try to punch it in the face. “You said something happened. Something you don’t understand.”  
The database in Renji’s brain does a quick run-through of his entire vocabulary, which isn’t too shabby to say the least, in an effort to put together a string of words that will A) describe the situation, B) be communicated adequately through Renji’s adrenaline and pure confusion. At this time, none are possible. In lieu of that, Renji motions blankly towards the living room as an invitation for investigation.

He can’t blame her for the suspicious look Rukia gives him, and she edges towards the doorway with her back close to the wall. Tiptoeing to prevent making sound or alarm the beast, she inches closer until she can peek into the room. Then lean in and gawk.

Like her spine has just been snapped straight, Rukia spins on her heels and regards Renji like he’s committed a sin against nature. And for all Renji knows, he just very well might have. “Renji!”

He rubs his forehead with his thumb and index finger. “I know.”

“There’s a man in there!”

“I know.”

Rukia turns around again. Then turns back, no less outraged. “He’s got- those- fucking teeth!”

“I know.”

“He’s wearing your pants!”

“I know!”

He certainly is. Rukia turns around again and Renji follows her eyesight down the center of the room, which has been widely cleared of furniture to make room for the inscriptions, and the young man standing there.

He’s tall, though not quite as tall or bulky as Renji, as evidence by the fact that Renji’s own jeans and grey sweatshirt hang off his slim frame by a bit. In good health, his skin must have once been a healthy and dark tan but seems to have been drained from ages of sunlight deprivation.

Renji and Rukia are regarded from under a shaggy frame of black bangs, between which a flash of grey eyes watch them through narrow and careful slits. That’s about the most human part of him, before the rest of his face from the cheekbones down becomes a mess- three savage lines down one side, scars splitting open the skin to the mottled tissue underneath. On the other side are curious tattoos. They almost look like a sigil of worship, like Renji’s own markings. But they don’t resemble any god that Renji has ever heard of.

And of course, there are ‘those teeth’, as Rukia referred to them. Same as the outer mask of the hollow, before the spell turned everything all haywire and suddenly everything happened so much. Renji has an inkling that those chompers are just as good for tearing and chewing as they were before.

“Who is he?” Rukia asks, not quite fearful but wholistically fascinated. She doesn’t get to see Renji’s shrug because the strange man gives an answer for himself.

It’s weird to watch his mouth move. Those lips, struggling and failing to contain all those wicked fangs, don’t even appear like they’ll be able to form coherent syllables, but he someone manages to work around his brutal jaw and answer in a clear voice, as if he were introducing himself on the first day of class. “I’m Shuuhei.” Bony toes wiggle against the floor from under the rolled-up cuffs of Renji’s pants.

“He’s Shuuhei.” Renji echoes like Rukia didn’t hear the first time, and is glad he didn’t actually settle on ‘Fluffy’ all that while ago.

“Okay…” Rukia says, very, very carefully but also very, very patiently. Curiosity compels bravery, and she wanders in the room to investigate Shuuhei more closely. “And you are… the hollow that lived in this house?”

Some of the blunt valor that accompanied Shuuhei’s introduction dwindles, and he shifts to picking the collar of his sweatshirt. Almost self-consciously or something. “I- I guess so. Pretty sure.”

“And Renji gave you his jeans and shirt to wear.”

“I didn’t have any before.”

That accusing voice comes baring back down on Renji full force. “It wasn’t enough for you to try and live with an actual giant hollow, so you went and turned him into a guy? You turned your hollow into a naked guy. This isn’t real, you are bullshitting me.”

“Well I didn’t do it on purpose!” Renji spreads his arms and seethes. “Look- maybe this was what’s supposed to happen. Hollows are already just impure human souls, they just barely make the cut to be monsters anyways. Maybe when I bound our souls together, it… like… fixed his soul.” Those teeth catch the lantern light eerily well. “Partially.”

“That sounds pretty dumb.” Shuuhei the Ex-hollow comments, and Rukia looks like she’s trying hard to disagree with them both while Renji hisses.” How would you know?”

Rukia’s hands cut through the air and Renji’s concentration. “Wait, so back up. You made him your Familiar?”

“That was the plan.”

“So he’s your Familiar now, too? Isn’t it illegal to have a human as a Familiar. Like, super illegal? There are taboos on that sort of thing, Renji! I’m surprised you even still have all of your limbs and skin attached.”

“Huh. Yeah, that is weird.” Renji folds his arms and regards Shuuhei with no small amount of interest, and asks as casually as he can, “So are you human now, or what?”

Shuuhei’s brows knit over his eyes, which are wide and flashing white. He’s surprisingly expressive with those eyes, which is good because Renji can’t tell a grin from a grimace with that jaw on him. “I dunno.” A hand of fingers- very human-looking fingers- brush over his face, over his lips and trailing around the edge of his teeth. “Not too human, I guess.” The hand retracts and disappears into the sweatshirt pocket. “I can remember a little bit about being a hollow, but nothing else. You fed me bacon.”

This last part is delivered exclusively at Renji, and the pure earnesty in Shuuhei the Not-a-Hollow’s voice is entirely too endearing to be tolerable. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Well.” Rukia huffs with a loud exhale, sounding for all the world like this is a puzzle and she tried her best and is satisfied with her efforts. “Congrats on your new Familiar, Renji. I hope you too are very happy together.”

“By the way-” Shuuhei blurts out and turns those eyes on Renji with a driving kind of intensity. “I think I missed out on most of the explanations and stuff before. What exactly is a ‘Familiar’, anyways?”

Which is how the Abarai household decreased by half a hollow and increased by half a human. Approximately.

-

All in all, Shuuhei is much easier to take care of as an inhuman (Which is the only thing that he, Renji and Rukia can agree is a fitting label for him, since he’s not a hollow anymore but they can’t honestly say he’s a human being) than as a hollow. For one thing, there’s a significant decrease in attempts to chase Renji around the house and bite his head off, regardless of that one time he finally gave in and reminded Shuuhei that because he was now partially a human he had to do partially human things, like take a shower.

“It’s not that bad. You want bad, try sniffing around the mildewy parts of the crawl space. Smells like shit went and died. Not that it would kill you to clean it out once in a while or anything.” Shuuhei commented while sniffing the inside of his shirt, after the two of them had gone through Renji’s wardrobe and compromised on what could officially belong to Shuuhei until they could go shopping. That face was going to provide a particular problem in that regard.

They try out a number of ways around it, to no avail. Renji suspects that Shuuhei may not be all too enthusiastic about going out in the first place, and when the subject comes up he’s very quick to point out that he’s spent a lot of time in his house so why shake that up now? Countless temptations and promises of shops and shows and ice cream are presented to convince him otherwise, and Shuuhei eventually corrodes more and more to the idea each morning over breakfast, which has become a very regular little staple of the day. Cereal and coffee for Renji, and raw whatever meat is in the fridge and coffee for Shuuhei.

The primary issue to be overcome is just Shuuhei’s mouth. A simple problem with a simple solution, right? Wrong. Covering up the bottom half of his face should be easy enough, right? No, also wrong.

Shuuhei’s teeth are just as effective as before, and those pointy little bastards rip through everything. Renji’s bandanna tied around Shuuhei’s face barely lasted five minutes. Scarves and hoods are no match. Fabric is like weakest kind of water when faced with the devastation of those teeth.

Renji recalls that Momo has some talent in welding and other things that involve making shapes over a hot fire, and texts her with a request to build a mouthpiece of some sort that can be worn over the face and, more importantly, over the teeth. Until then, Renji will just have to estimate Shuuhei’s size and style when running through thrift shops.  
Sleeping arrangements bring up some pretty creepy questions- such as the long-awaited backstory of the two bedrooms upstairs. Renji expects Shuuhei to walk in to either the master bedroom or the children’s room and have some kind of big revelation. An epiphany.

Instead, when Renji offers the children’s room for Shuuhei to expect, the reaction is simply… underwhelming.

Shuuhei’s feet trod over the carpet dusty carpet, narrowly missing legos and small toy soldiers like mines across the floor. He stands in the middle of the room, which is all lonely and sad and missing two young siblings, and looks back at Renji with a kind of uncertainty. A blank and lost look, like a puppy left out in the rain.

“What am I looking for in here, exactly?”

“Anything that might jar your memory.” Renji encourages him from the doorway. “Anything from your life before you were a hollow.”

And to his credit, Shuuhei tries. He wanders around the room, picking at the action figures and children’s adventure books on the shelves and running his palm over the heavy flannel cover on the bottom bunk bed. He even kneels down and picks up a toy car off the elaborate track set, turning it over in his hands like there might be something there.

Shuuhei turns back to the Witch with a disappointed look, one that Renji reflects. No dice.

Which still leaves the problem of where Shuuhei is going to spend the night. For some reason, Renji can’t in good consciousness make Shuuhei sleep on the lumpy couch, which he blames on a sense of injustice since Shuuhei is most likely one of the original occupants of this house.

There’s something else in that, too. Something more forlorn and unsettling at leaving Shuuhei on his own in the drafty first floor. Maybe some separation anxiety between Renji and the part of his soul he put in the other. Stupid soul. So he gives Shuuhei the choice.

“Couch or bed, huh?” Shuuhei seems to gnaw on the question as he stirs around macaroni at the stove. Other people might consider this to be kind of a dangerous question- Renji hasn’t shared a bed with anyone since his last relationship ended, and it’s not exactly mature of him but the idea seems kind of awkward and intimate- but Shuuhei just contemplates it like he genuinely doesn’t care. It could be that he really doesn’t. It could also be that Shuuhei has been sleeping in the attic for gods know how long so it doesn’t make a difference to him where he conks out. There’s no way of being sure. Renji likes that about him. “I dunno. It probably won’t make a difference either way. The couch is fine.”

“Then I’ll camp out down here, too.” Renji decides, and absently flips open to a page in his anthology text on snakes.

Shuuhei snorts in amusement and shakes his head. “I just made up my mind and you’re moving in on my territory. Seriously, it’s fine.”

“I’ll be up late doing work anyways.” Renji lies. “I’m very important like that.”

-

Rukia is the one who ends up discovering the mystery of the house first. She did research in the town archives, which is curious because neither Renji or Shuuhei had actually considered that.

“Seriously?” She demands over a stack of newsprint. “Don’t you want to know?”

“We kind of thought we would just try and ‘feel it.’” Renji summarizes and Shuuhei makes a noncommittal wavey hand-motion and adds “We got mixed results.”

She gives them simultaneous looks of disbelief and exasperation as dark eyes roll from one to the other, and Renji is struck with a very satisfied feeling. Like an inside joke that the three of them are in on. Rukia stomps her way into the kitchen, shoes clacking against the tile floor with far more bravery now that Shuuhei is under six feet and not quite so inclined to lurking in the corners. Renji observes that thoughtless courage with fondness. The stacks of newspaper hit the table flatly, and shower dust over the surface. Shuuhei makes a noise and a comment about having to clean that later before Renji begins to paw through the stack with the hungry observation he does for Witchcraft anthology.

A List of Facts About the House that Renji Bought, Which was Formerly Thought to be Probably Haunted, then Definitely Haunted, Then Less Haunted:

1\. According to the newsprint, it’s been around for long over fifty years ago. That much was probably obvious by the state of the building and what have you, but that’s the earliest evidence that could be found on it’s existence. The newsprint documenting it has gone from ink black to a faded gray. The paper threatened to come apart when held like candy floss. The picture they used depicts a happier, nicer looking building in a photo that’s been drained almost to the point of being unrecognizable. But Renji recognizes it.

2\. They were nice people. The family that lived there, that is. The father was a history teacher and the mother was a dentist before falling ill. The two thought that the fresh air out in the open would be good for her health, and for their two growing young sons. Such a nice family. No one expected this to happen to them. They were so picture-perfect for a tragedy, the papers couldn’t help but go ballistic.

3\. was never a doubt in anyone’s mind that after the event, the house was haunted. By whose soul (or souls), no one could be sure. The local officials passed it on to the Church to handle, who passed it on to the Cohorts, who didn’t see any money to be made so they didn’t pass it on to anybody.

One tried. A hunter, who tried to put the spirits to rest and exhume whatever was keeping them in limbo. But they don’t keep records of people like that.

4\. They took pictures everywhere. Every room in the house. The kitchen. The bathrooms. Nothing was untouched by cameras a death. Even the children’s room, where Shuuhei locked himself in for the night and no amount of coaxing from Renji and Rukia could draw him out to the present. Rukia hovers in the hallway and asks Renji if he was going to be okay. Renji wishes he knew.

“So we’re pretty sure I’m dead, then.” Shuuhei says to Renji the next morning. Rukia spent the night on the couch, and Renji has set himself on the porch to pour through the newspapers again, only to shuffle them under his toolkit when his Familiar appears. “Yay.”

“I mean you were a hollow, so we could have already guessed that.” Renji replies with carefully measured emotion in his voice. To apologize might seem facetious. To ignore might be hurtful.

But if Shuuhei misreads anything from his tone, it doesn’t show. The porch squeals as Shuuhei drops down on it next to Renji, who considers that in time seeing sunlight again will do him well. “How old did it say they- the family was.”

Renji pretends its not still fresh in his mind when he answers. “The parents were both in their 30’s. The boys were young. Nine, I think? but it was, like, half a century ago.”

“You can’t exactly tell a hollow’s age, can you?” Shuuhei curls his knees towards his body, leaning back on his hands. The line where the morning sunlight splits off from the shade of the porch crosses over his chest, over the black t-shirt that for once isn’t a hand-me-down from Renji. “I mean, they say those things can be hundreds of years old, yeah? Maybe they have a slower aging process.”

It makes about as much sense as anything else that surrounds Shuuhei being here right now, so Renji decides to roll with it. “Could be. I mean, we’ll probably never be able t’ know for certain. Nothing like that-” He corrects himself with one hand twisting the knuckles of the other. “… like you has existed before. As far as I’ve ever heard of, anyways.”

“Pretty weird. Pretty fucked up.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Shuuhei rubs his eye with one hand, over the number and stripe on his right side. It’s still a peculiar marking, one that makes the ambitious side of Renji wonder how much of Shuuhei’s immortal soul was warped in the process of being de-hollowfied. Then again, that part of the soul is now part of Renji’s soul. Shuuhei waits a minute before turning those dark eyes on Renji and saying, “I wanna live.”

“Good to hear.”

“No, I mean I want to be your Familiar.” Shuuhei says with rising insistence, turning on his hip to look at Renji better with both sides of his jigsaw face. “I don’t remember everything about being a hollow, but I remember some stuff, and I remember stuff about you. If you’re gonna try to break the contract because it’s not fair or because you think I can’t be a good Familiar or something, I go back to being a hollow. And that’d blow.”

He’s right- on both of those accounts. A cold spike of guilt drops in Renji’s chest. How can he, in good conscious, keep Shuuhei bound in what is essentially a life-time of servitude? Familiars are supposed to be like property. Working dogs for Witches. In the long run, it would be kinder to let Shuuhei go and try to release his soul through other means-

Grey eyes narrow over a twisted mouth with suspicion. “Yeah, like that. I figured- but I don’t want you to break it. This might be the only chance I get to be alive again, and not a mindless monster, which might sound wacky to you but has a very low appeal to me. There has to be a good reason for me still being here, right? I say we take it, and it’s a win-win for both of us.”

“Oh yeah?” Renji risks a dismissive scoff, and inwardly wonders if Shuuhei will feel the same way ten years down the road. “What makes you think I want to be responsible for your skinny ass, then?” And then lurches when Shuuhei’s fist makes rough contact with his shoulder effortlessly. God. That guy has a right hook.  
“I’m serious about this, okay? Lay off my skinny ass.” Shuuhei might be smiling while he rolls his eyes. Renji is slowly getting used to being able to tell. “I’m not gonna take this for granted. And there are worse people to end up working for.”

“We’d have to act the part.” Renji points out as he rubs his shoulder and tries not to think about being a last resort. “You’d have to help me with my work. Follow my orders. Do what I say. Minimal moaning and crying. Are you gonna be okay with that?”

“Somehow, I think I’ll manage. You’re not really a bad guy.” Shuuhei says in a voice that’s not quite decipherable, so Renji has a hard time reading how much sarcasm is laced into those words. “Sooner or later I’ll have you trained.”

The thing is that nobody has ever given Renji that much responsibility before. He’s never even owned anything more demanding than a houseplant, so how is he supposed to justify owning a whole person? How does he even earn the right?

It feels… icky, for lack of a better word. Because he can’t. Not in a million years. Not for a life a million times over.

Shuuhei starts a little when the ground begins to sink in front of the porch, earth getting swallowed into a swirling black vortex. A shadow the size of a baseball opens up to something a little more cantaloupe-sized, and Renji makes a mental reminder to himself to start working on getting Shuuhei more acclimated to the outside world.

The Witch Way spits out a parcel, what looks like a curved crescent wrapped in brown paper and black wire. The dull silver muzzle sits on the dirt between their feet and waits for someone to pick it off the ground.

-

It becomes something to get used to, and slowly but surely they do. Shuuhei is so present around the house that Renji practically trips over him no less than five times a day, and Rukia’s visits more often accompany an muttered undercurrent of “The Daring Duo.”

They even manage to get him to go into town and show Shuuhei the ropes, albeit with the crutch of the muzzle to deter any eager monster-hunters. It’s hard, Renji has to imagine, for a guy who’s spent the past few decades not being in his proper state of mind, let alone in broad daylight, but Renji can physically see how hard he’s trying. Looks over Shuuhei’s shoulder with those careful eyes, watching for approval. There’s so much pride inside Renji he could cut himself open and bleed from it.

Rukia is a big help- she’s better with people than she believes herself to be, and where Renji’s will and impatience get the better of him and by extension get the better of Shuuhei, she’s there to draw them back in. And eventually, she even manages to teach Shuuhei how to wrangle their red-head back into line when Renji gets overzealous.

He’s so delighted, and he’s so happy. This family and these friends he’s made for himself. He almost doesn’t notice when Rukia starts to withdraw. Almost.

It’s a small but secure congregation of the coven at Bayside, pouring over coffee and theories and old battle stories and tales from adventures. A good group for Renji to leave Shuuhei in, while Ikkaku attempts to entertain the crowd with a story about his and Yumichika’s various and extremely dangerous encounters with the desert fauna. Renji let’s himself get so sucked in, he almost doesn’t manage to catch sight of Rukia out of the corner of his eye heading out the door.

Now, it’s one thing to leave during a small social party. It’s another to leave when debates about whether or not one can actually claim to have seen a real-life sand worm and not just a hallucination. Renji’s whiskey with coffee buzz in his hands and in his stomach and in his feet, which slip away from the crowd and out the door to follow.

“Ru-”

He stops when she turns, looking at him with guilty wide eyes like glowing headlights. A coat wrapped around her shoulders, and a suitcase under her arm.

Renji’s skull throbs with some half-buried memory. With everything that had been going on, weeks seemed to stretch into months and months into eternity. What Rukia had said before Renji bought his house, what seemed like a lifetime ago. About moving out, and finding a new job.

“Where ya’ goin’?”

Rukia looked down and pushed dark bangs behind her ears, bravely and stubbornly obstinate. “Out.”

“Are you moving?”

“Yeah.” Rukia looked back up, and Renji takes a minute to appreciate how grown-up she looks when all her life is packed away into a clunky suitcase. “I got the job. I would have told you sooner but, y’know, you had Shuuhei and everything so I thought it could wait.”

“Where are you going?” And why is she trying to hide it.

She grimaces, and it looks like a stressed parody of a smile. Rukia does not show teeth when she smiles. Not usually. Not that Renji can recall. “Does that really matter? Just be happy for me, okay? They made me an offer for me that I can’t refuse, and my brother-in-law-”

Rukia’s brother-in-law. Something goes sour in Renji’s mouth, rotting and decaying. Renji has only met Byakuya a sparse number of times, but enough not to care for his money or his connections or the way he’s never around as long as Rukia lived in the Witch side of the city.

From the look on his face, Rukia can probably tell that was the wrong thing to say. She shakes her fist at her side with a tense look like she’s frustrated. “Renji, they want me to become a priestess. For the Church. I could help a lot of people.”

“A priestess.” Renji echoes, exhaling. There’s something to be very mad about with that, he’s sure. But honestly, Renji has no idea what priests and priestesses do for the Church, except its usually what Witches do except Witches do it better.

“It won’t be a big deal- I’ll still hang around. Nothing will change.” Rukia promises, tightening both hands on the suitcase and trying for a weak and reassuring smile. “Walk me there?”

It’s not Renji’s decision to make, and they both know it, and so the only thing he can do is help.

He walks with her as far as Cathedral Drive before seeing her off into the building, a castle of grand and daunting and egoistic proportions. Rukia gives Renji a tight hug with her doll-like arms squeezing his midsection with startlingly force.

And the last look Renji sees of her is the outline of her dress and coat and those petal-blue eyes as the cathedral doors swallow her whole

The only thing Renji can do is help.

But Renji’s strengths don’t lie in helping. And the streetlamp overhead bursts like a jet-black firework.

-

The next day was Sunday, and the banners weren’t even hung before long-legged strides took Renji up the piano-teeth stairs to the cathedral doors.

Renji wouldn’t have been surprised of the inside of the building was empty. It seemed like that sort of place- the kind of place that would look suitable all empty and ghostily hollowed out. But today was a day of worship for the Church. Today was the day for miracles to be performed in this hall, at that alter.

From one end of the hall to the other, there was a clatter of moving feet. People in robes of opaque white and coal-dust black, with blue patterns draw over their eyes and into their hands, pulling up colorful banners and setting up flowers around the pews. Renji wonders offhandedly whether it’s make-up or tattoos. He certainly does not wonder whether he’ll ever see Rukia with patterns like that etched into her skin.

There’s a flow like a back current that seems hell-bent on being directly in Renji’s way, which is just as well because Renji doesn’t even know where to go once he’s inside. Enormous baskets of orchids and roses appeared just a step ahead of him, with a rather put upon priest or priestess somewhere underneath them. The Witch easily sidestepped a small teenager wrestling with an elaborate candelabra that threatened to catch a co-workers hair.

From petals to perfumes, it was exactly as Renji expected it to look and he loathed it. Not that there was time for Renji to dwell on the fact that he had put his blood, sweat, tears and soul into mastering an advanced and exclusive branch of magic and was stretched for every cent along the way while this building sat in gilded gold and velvet curtains.

And then he saw something that was, for once, entirely interesting.

“What the hell are you carrying there?”

A lamb-like boy started, which jostled the burden he was hoisting on a wheeled platform. Though not by much. The object he was transporting was easily far taller and wider than he was. In fact, it was almost a foot taller than Renji himself was. Almost. About seven feet high, if Renji has to guess.

The boy looked at Renji, face gone a blanched and unhealthy pale, and then glanced around as if waiting for another person to step in and provide aid. Renji’s patience continued to dwindle at an alarming rate. “I said what the fuck is that thing you’ve got?”

“I-its for the displays.” The answer came timidly. “One of the relics belonging to the Church’s history. It’s just going over by the begonias-”

“History.” Rudeness was Renji’s intention upon entry, but even that’s just kindling for a new and different kind of anger. His sneer has the boy shying away to a backdrop of crackling like raw static buzzing in Renji’s tight fists. “This is history, is it?”

“If you’re going to try and give a sermon here, could you wait about an hour or two? I’d love for you to do my job for me.”

That voice, grating and ghastly as ever, that stopped Renji in the midst of baring his fangs and turned his blood cold as ice and hot as magma in the same instance that he might as well be made of smoke and steam. The original target had been acquired.

Izuru Kira looks about as haunting and otherworldly as the last time Renji saw him, which does nothing to improve his current mood. The black robes suit him well, outlining how much he looks like a soaked cat in a mental image that does a better job of giving Renji a sense of satisfaction than looking at the showy gold jewelry around his neck and wrists. They don’t look like something that Izuru would pick out for himself. The blue omega on his throat blinks over the lip of Izuru’s shirt collar like a third eye.

He doesn’t look happy at all to see Renji, which is also reminiscent of their last time seeing each other. Renji isn’t happy, either.

“You,” Renji hisses through the tight bars of his teeth and unclouds the red that’s trying to overtake his vision. “owe me some explanations.”

“No, I really don’t.” Izuru breathes out coolly, and the tone in his voice is enough to make lesser men go ballistic. Nothing is quite so infuriating as to be enraged when someone else couldn’t care less. Sometimes nothing hurts more, either.

Fingers dyed the color of antifreeze slip into his pockets, and Izuru regards Renji with dull eyes that it would be a surprise that Izuru was even paying attention to anything around him at all. What gives him away is tight hold around the corners of the eyes- narrowed and with no short supply of stubbornness. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, and I could care less about what you want.” Renji spits back. Firing insults and arguments and Izuru, though temporarily satisfying, is about as effective as battering his knuckles against a brick wall. He came here for answers. “What are you trying to do with Rukia? Your bunch doesn’t just up and hire our bunch out of the blue like that.”

“The fact that you assume I had anything to do with that is flattering and adorable.” Izuru waves away the priest Renji had been interrogating, who gratefully slinks away while abandoning his delivery.

“I know better than to trust anything up to coincidence with this place, and with you. And don’t give me that ‘the gods have a plan’ bullshit. Rukia’s gods aren’t your gods.”

“Maybe not now.” Izuru shrugs his shoulders and fixes his collar, which is a tactic that Renji is too familiar with to be fooled by. If there’s anyone who knows how dangerous Renji can be when he’s angry, it’s this person. “They’ll put her through the whole conversion ritual, I imagine. It’s mostly a boring process, so don’t get worried for her safety or anything. This is a house of healing, after all. Give it a year and it will be like she was born for the job. She’s smart and resourceful. I have no doubt she’ll be fine, no matter how much you want to brood.”

“But she wasn’t born for it, she is a Witch!” Renji startles a few nearby priests, who shrink at the word ‘Witch’ and scatter.

Eyes like that from Izuru could stop a heart from beating. “There’s no place for Witches in the Church’s domain.”

The words hold a weight of definiteness, and they certainly weren’t said right here and now because they only apply to Rukia. But if Renji were here because he was wanted in the first place, that might have mattered.

Before Renji can offer a retort, Izuru launches into a monologue with the same flat tone as if he had been forced to memorize it. “Rukia will not be a Witch anymore. Not in here. Not off duty. Not to you and any of your friends. In fact, she’s discouraged from associating with dark magic at all. She won’t be punished for it- I suppose mistakes happen to us all once in a while- but it will reflect harshly on her record. Not exactly nice for public image and all that.”

That’s not what Rukia told him. Renji bites down his shock. Was she lying when she told him that she’d see him again? Did she even know?

What has Rukia signed up for that nobody has told her?

Renji’s defense is a lack-luster wall of obstinance. “You can’t do that.” and Izuru’s mouth sets into a grim line, fitting his grim face and his grim persona. They both know that in that moment, there are a lot of things that Izuru can do.

The electricity in Izuru’s glare evaporates when a white hand places itself on his shoulder. “Now, now, Izuru! Is that how we run this house? Being rude to our guests? Tsk tsk tsk.” A gold ring glitters on the long fingers of the hand, a pale jewel emblazoned with the imagine of a snake swallowing a bird.

The man attached to that hand extends the other towards Renji with deliberate slowness, one that doesn’t mask the fact that he could move very quickly if he wanted to. White robes hang from his arm like a noose.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. Hey, there!” That voice is honey. Like sugar fermenting and turning crusty and stale, and Renji is forced to take a moment to marvel at that smile like a slit carved in to the man’s face. “Name’s Ichimaru, but you can call me Gin. I’m the Prophet of this lil’ chapel of our’s. I’d introduce Izuru here, but you seem to already have met my star pupil.”

Renji waits for Izuru to say something. To distance himself like he’s done to everybody else, shake off those fingers that inch closer to the junction between his shoulder and a neck, but nothing happens. Instead, Renji receives a silent and mortified and nasty look, like something is coming and Renji is going to deserve whatever it is.  
Gin doesn’t take the silence from either Renji or Izuru as an invitation to leave. On the contrary, he seems all the more delighted to hang around. The smile widens in a way that makes Renji slightly nauseous. “I apologize if anything Izuru here said may have upset you. He’s not so good with people, this ole’ wallflower. We’re usually welcoming to any newcomers. Feel free to grab a seat and enjoy our service, I’m sure you’ll love it. Everybody does.”

“Welcoming. Sure.” Renji regains some of his barings enough to jab his thumb at the hulking object that the priest left behind. “And that’s supposed to be welcoming?”

What he’s referring to is the seven-foot tall, four-foot wide box, and it’s certainly garish enough to belong in the Cathedral. Metal polished to an impeccable sheen, and emblazoned with patterns of painted silver and gold. A gruesomely shaped face leers down at them from the top, stern and judgemental and tortured.

It’s certainly not the kind of thing that belongs sitting between flower pots.

“Oh, you know what that is!” Gin says brightly, in the same voice that might be better suited to say ‘Oh, you’re not a completely ignorant moron.’ “Ah, yes. The Iron Jaw is a purdy piece of our collection, here. Took me ages to dig it up from storage and I sure couldn’t have done it without Izuru, but I think it’s an important piece of history, don’t you?”

“That thing should have been destroyed hundreds of years ago. Not on display!” Renji wants to bark, but the shadow of that colossal, metal thing is distracting. He wants to edge away from it. He wants it to be buried still.

He is paid no mind by the Prophet, who taps Izuru’s head like a dog. “Izuru, you know all about the Iron Jaw, don’t you?” It’s an invitation to explain, one so leading that Renji doesn’t think Izuru would possibly sink to the level of playing games like this. He is surprised again.

A brief exhale, followed by that monotone of distaste disguised as boredom. “The Iron Jaw was a design created in the old times for the purpose of hunting Witches. The goal was to create a method of torture that Witches couldn’t escape from.” Blue eyes slide down to the floor. “The legends say that Witchcraft was developed by those who were excluded from society. The misfits and oppressed looked to mercy from the Dark Gods for a way to reclaim autonomy.”

He doesn’t need to tell Renji this. They both know who taught Izuru about it in the first place. Who showed him everything he knows about magic since they were kids.

“Very good!” Gin’s lips stretch ever further towards his ears, and he claps his hands over Izuru’s shoulders like a particularly stubborn lamprey wrapped around its victim. The Prophet gazes up at the huge metal coffin like he’s admiring it. “Lot’s of folks didn’t think much of Witches, leadin’ to the Witch Hunts of the old days. But killing them proved tricky. Having the ability to manipulate objects and elements did that. So our big friend here was invented. That’s the thing about Witchcraft-”

Gin’s face slides back to Renji, and a sliver of pale blue flickers under dark lashes for less than a second. “They can only use magic to change what they can visualize. The Iron Jaw locks from the outside, usually with a thousand priest’s blessings to keep it sealed.” A hand slithers out to stroke the machine’s broad side. “Once you’re in this baby, yer’ locked in for the rest of forever. There’s no unlocking it from the inside.”

If Renji needed to think about how many people starved to a slow and agonizing death in that monstrosity, his dreams have come true.

The Prophet turns and says, with nothing but joy in his voice. “Which is exactly why it should be out here! As a reminder that even the Church makes mistakes. Yamada!” Gin snaps his fingers and a priest shuffles in front of him. “Set this by the display, between the big flower pots. Make it nice and fancy for the folks, there’s a good boy. Izuru, see yer friend out of here before people see him when they come in.”

So much for welcoming, let alone staying for the services. Gin slides away, his work apparently done, and Renji turns to leave before he is subjected to anything else. There’s a cold and uncomfortable prickly feeling in his spine that goes up and down from the start to the finish of him.

Izuru stops him, for once letting some feeling sink into his voice. “Renji, wait!”

He doesn’t want to wait. Renji wants to get out. He’s not even sure why, whether he can pin it down to a reason and put all his emotions into neat, compartmentalized boxes, but he’s sure he can do it as long as he’s not here.

Renji turns around, and Izuru takes a half a step backwards like he’s surprised Renji listened to him at all. “I’ll… I’ll take care of Rukia.”

“Sure.” Renji growls and marches out the door. The breath air fills him, through his mouth and his nose and the breeze fills his lungs until he might burst with it.

But his chest still feels too tight and airless. Claustrophobic, even.

-

“What do you think of living on the road for a bit.” Renji suggests to Shuuhi in the evening, after he’s home and holed himself away. He plays aimlessly with the vials in his kit while Shuuhei hoists around some potted plants.

“The road?” Shuuhei echoes, curious but noncommittal.

“Yeah. I could probably get us some transport. We’d still own the place, but we’d be out a lot. Maybe further from town.” Renji elaborated and jaws on a cork between his teeth. “Just think about it for a bit.” Someone out there has got to have a wagon or something lying around. Nice and old timey.


End file.
